I don’t spend the time in preparation for other weekends as I do for Easter.
I don’t put the same energy into the creative planning for a random weekend in August as I do when Easter rolls around.
I don’t approach every weekend service as if it was Easter – a day I know when more people who don’t know Jesus come to church.

But what if I did? What if we did?

Any church who keeps attendance records, uses church management software, or tries in any way to track data knows there are better attended Sundays than others. Historically this coming Sunday, the one following Easter tends to be a lower attended day. Holidays, School breaks, and more trend lower as well.

Have you ever been guilty of not planning as much for those weekends as you do for others?I have.

Have you ever held onto creative elements to use for better attended Sundays?I have.

Have you ever even once scheduled people, band members, tech crews, or others differently because of the projected attendance of a weekend?I’m not proud of it but I have.

But what if we approached every weekend service like we do Easter? Or Christmas? Or Canadian Boxing Day? (I assume that’s a big day?)

What if we pushed ourselves to approach those days in the same manner we do the “big days.” Every weekend we meet there are people that need to experience the powerful Love of God. There are people who are searching. There are people who are hurting. There are people who don’t know what they believe.

What if we challenged ourselves to always push for more. To always be creative. To always seek to prayerfully consider how we plan our services and service elements – because someones life may depend on it, their hope may depend on it, their peace may depend on it.

I am certain I will be guilty of maybe planning less on a weekend than I could. Or even saving something for a different week because it’s SO GOOD! But my prayer now is that I will start to approach every week as if the people who walk through the doors of the church are lost, hurting, hungry, and just as important as the ones from any other weekend.

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1 Comment

I would agree that we should approach every weekend with fresh creativity (as best we can). I don’t like the idea of taking short cuts on the weekends I know will have much lower attendance. I’m coming from a Canadian context, so our annual attendance patterns may be slightly different than yours, but i would guess not by much.

In my context there are people checking out church for the first time every week – these are people who dont have relationship with God and they deserve my team’s best effort…
But there are always some Sundays where we put more effort and energy into the program side of things than we would for a Sunday in August or even February. (Easter weekend being on of them.) This year, numerically, our Easter morning was 2x the size of our average Sunday attendance on the weeks leading up to Easter. Knowing that pattern ahead of time, in my mind, should demand way more attention, preparation, and rehearsal time.

I personally don’t think you should feel guilty for scheduling certain people on your teams to ensure strength for certain weekends. I think that’s your job as the leader; to leverage your team’s abilities in order to have the greatest kingdom impact possible.